7 The Villanelle and the Villanellists
Naples National Archaeological Museum, public domain.
“Nothing . . . nothing is greater than Socrates’ wisdom - indeed, by his own affirmation, nothing is Socrates’ wisdom . . . ”
Jean Passerat
Jean Passerat was born on October 18, 1534, in the provincial city of Troyes in France, about 90 miles east of Paris on the Seine River. He died on September 14, 1602 in Paris. Known today as the French poet who first penned the villanelle, in his time, his villanelles were not highly regarded, though he was quite popular as a writer, thinker, and speaker. Passerat was also a political satirist and also was a distinguished professor.
In his time, of all of his poetry, nothing was as popular as his poem on nothing called, “De Nihilo,”
Passerat never married. His writings were edited and published posthumously by a nephew. The very first villanelle “J’ai perdu ma tourterelle” which is translated as “I Have Lost My Turtle Dove,” was published in 1606, four years after his death. With this and a few other villanelles that he wrote, he standardized the form that is still used today. I have heard that Passerat was inspired to write this villanelle while on a walking holiday in Italy where he heard harvesters singing in the fields as they worked. I have also heard that the villanelle was inspired by the shepherd songs of old. Clearly, Passerat liked the simplicity of the these rustic songs and the rounds made in the song, and incorporated these components into the structure of his poem through the use of simple syntax, simple rhyme, and refrains. In 1906, three hundred years after its first publication, this first villanelle, “J’ay perdu ma Tourterelle,” was translated into English. The form was revived in the middle of the nineteenth century by writers such as Theodore de Banville, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Seamus Heaney, and Sylvia Plath.
Thank you for joing me. Tune in tomorrow as we examine Passerat’s poem, “I Have Lost My Turtle Dove” up close. Until then, stay CHARMED.
Resources
Bloom, Harold. The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost. First, Harper Collins, 2004.
Boland, Eavan, and Mark Strand. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Reprint, W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jean Passerat". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Oct. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Passerat. Accessed 4 September 2021.
Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Fussell (1-Jan-1979) Paperback. Revised, McGraw-Hill Higher Education; Revised edition edition (1 Jan. 1979), 1979.
White, Paul. " The Poetics of Nothing: Jean Passerat’s ‘De Nihilo’ and its Legacy". Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5.3 (2020): 237-273. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00503001 Web.
Questions
What do you know about odes?
Have you ever read or listened to an ode?
Do you have a favorite ode?
Have you ever written an ode?
If you were to write an ode, what or who would be your subject?